Amid all of the news about bicyclists and motorists getting testy with each other on Portland roads - and the seemingly constant banter about whether it's been overblown - it wouldn't hurt to read Jim Blackwood's thoughts on just how scary it is to nearly hit a cyclist with a car.

Sunday, in his post "Almost Another Dead Bicyclist," he reflects on how he nearly "killed" a biker who blew through a stoplight at Southeast 50th Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard Saturday night as Blackwood was driving his car. It was just a block from where another "red light-running" cylist was nearly killed a week earlier, he wrote.

"I doubt the fool even knows he almost died last night," Blackwood says in his blog, adding that the cyclist didn't have a light and he saw others riding without helmets.

Trying to be "constructive," he said he fired off a letter to fellow blogger Jonathan Maus, hoping he would post it on Bikeportland.org. In the missive, Blackwood asks why Maus and others aren't pushing accountability as much as cyclists' rights.

"Honestly, I don't want (to) kill a bicyclist," he wrote. "Why aren't you and the bike advocates at city hall demanding mandatory lights and helmets?"

In his blog post, Blackwood concludes: "I don't want to see any more white bike shrines in my neighborhood, or anywhere else."